Penland is excited to report that ceramic sculptor and educator Dr. Sharif Bey, who is a Penland trustee and friend, has been selected for a 2022 USA Fellowship from United States Artists. The US Artists website describes this prestigious, $50,000 award as celebrating “artists and cultural practitioners who have significantly contributed to the creative landscape and arts ecosystem of the country.”
Sharif, who is an associate professor of art at Syracuse University, grew up in a large African American family in Pittsburgh. He says that, while many of the men in his family left school for jobs in industry, he had a pivotal experience at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild while he was in high school. That organization gave him a foundation of skills and connections in the ceramics world that helped chart his life’s path.
Among those connections was ceramic artist Norman Schulman, a long-time Penland neighbor and instructor. It was from Norm that he first heard of Penland. “We stayed in touch on and off,” Sharif remembers. “He screened his calls, and it always made me feel special that aging Norm remembered me. I could hear him in the background saying, ‘Gloria, I’ll take Sharif’s call.’”
He also met Penland instructor Winnie Owens-Hart during a studio visit in 1989, and in 2000, he took a workshop with her at Penland. “She was surprised that this kid from 11 years prior was still working in clay,” he remembers. A few years later, he was teaching at Winston-Salem State and arranged several times to bring groups of students to Penland for a visit. In 2007, he taught his own workshop at Penland.
Fast forward to 2108 when Sharif, now in his current position at Syracuse University, was one of four artists featured in an exhibition titled “Disrupting Craft” at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC. At that show’s opening, he met Penland staff member Yolanda Sommer (she is currently manager of diversity, recruitment, and partnerships). They were talking about Penland’s efforts to attract students of color, and he pitched the idea of the school partnering with several historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to bring groups of students and instructors for multi-day visits to Penland.
This conversation was the genesis of Penland’s HBCU tour (read about it here and here), which had its third iteration in 2021. Sharif was one of the artist/mentors for the first tour in 2018. Around that same time, he was invited to join Penland’s board of trustees.
Sharif describes his ceramic sculpture as inspired by functional pottery, Oceanic and African art, and art of the African diaspora, and investigating the cultural and political significance of adornment and the symbolic and formal properties of archetypal motifs while questioning how the meaning of icons and function transform across cultures and time.
He holds a BFA from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, an MFA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in art education from Pennsylvania State University. He’s had residencies at the McColl Center in Charlotte, NC, the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, and the Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin. In addition to the USA Fellowship, he has received a Pollock-Krasner grant and a Fulbright scholarship. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum among others.
Congratulations, Sharif, on this well-deserved honor!
